API Development & Integration

APIs are how modern software talks. Every payment that clears, every record that syncs between systems, every mobile screen that loads fresh data — there's an API behind it. When APIs are designed well, they're invisible: data flows where it needs to and nobody thinks about it. When they're designed poorly, they become the bottleneck that breaks integrations, leaks data, and stalls the rest of your roadmap.

We build and integrate APIs for companies that have outgrown spreadsheets and manual data entry, for SaaS teams exposing functionality to their customers, and for businesses that need two or more systems to work as one. This work runs through everything else we do — our web application development and SaaS product development both depend on a solid API layer underneath.

Types of APIs We Work With

There's no single "right" API style — the choice depends on how data is consumed and who's consuming it.

• REST remains the default for most web and mobile backends. It's predictable, cacheable, and well understood by every developer who might later touch your system. For the majority of CRUD-style applications, a clean REST API is the correct answer.
• GraphQL shines when clients need flexible, precise queries — fetching exactly the fields they want in a single request instead of stitching together several REST calls. It's especially useful for data-rich front ends and mobile apps where over-fetching costs real bandwidth and battery.
• Webhooks flip the model: instead of your system asking "anything new?" on a loop, the other system pushes events to you the moment they happen. They're essential for real-time workflows — a payment succeeds, an order ships, a form is submitted — and for keeping integrations responsive without constant polling.

In practice most platforms use a mix. A typical project might expose a REST API for partners, a GraphQL endpoint for an internal dashboard, and webhooks for event notifications. We help you decide which fits each part of the system rather than forcing everything through one pattern.

Building New APIs vs. Integrating Existing Systems

These are two related but distinct kinds of work, and most engagements involve some of each.

Building a new API means defining the contract from scratch — the endpoints, the data models, the request and response shapes, the error codes. This is what powers your own applications and what you expose to customers or partners. The hard part isn't writing the code; it's designing an interface that's intuitive on day one and still maintainable three years and ten features later.

Integrating third-party systems means connecting to APIs you don't control — Stripe, Salesforce, QuickBooks, a shipping carrier, an industry-specific platform with sparse documentation. Here the challenge is handling someone else's quirks gracefully: rate limits, inconsistent error responses, breaking changes pushed without warning, and authentication schemes that range from simple keys to multi-step OAuth flows. We build integrations defensively, so a hiccup on their end doesn't take down your product.

Authentication and Security

Every API is an open door until you secure it. We treat security as a baseline requirement, not an add-on:

• Authentication appropriate to the use case — API keys for server-to-server calls, OAuth 2.0 for delegated access, JWTs for stateless sessions, and signed requests for webhook verification.
• Authorization that enforces who can do what, down to the individual record where needed, so an authenticated user can't reach data that isn't theirs.
• Input validation on every endpoint to defend against injection and malformed-data attacks.
• Transport security and secret management so credentials and tokens are never exposed in logs, URLs, or client-side code.

The most common real-world API breaches come from broken access control and leaked credentials, not exotic exploits. We focus on getting those fundamentals right.

Documentation and Versioning

A well-documented API is one developers can actually use. We generate interactive documentation (OpenAPI/Swagger) that lets your team — or your customers — explore endpoints, see example payloads, and test calls without reading source code. For a public or partner API, good docs are the difference between fast adoption and a flood of support tickets.

Versioning is the other half of long-term maintainability. We plan a versioning strategy from the start so you can ship improvements and fix mistakes without breaking the integrations people already depend on. Existing clients keep working while new ones get the better interface.

Reliability and Rate Limiting

An API that's correct but unreliable still fails its users. We build for the failure modes that show up in production:

• Rate limiting and throttling to protect your infrastructure from traffic spikes and abuse while keeping legitimate clients within fair bounds.
• Retries with backoff and idempotency keys so a flaky network or a duplicate webhook doesn't create duplicate charges or corrupted data.
• Graceful degradation when a third-party dependency is slow or down, so one provider's outage doesn't cascade into yours.
• Logging, monitoring, and alerting that surface problems before your customers report them.

Common Integration Scenarios

Most of the integration work we do clusters around a handful of recurring needs:

• Payments — Stripe, Square, PayPal, and others, including subscriptions, webhooks for payment events, and reconciliation with your own records.
• CRMs and marketing platforms — Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp — so leads, contacts, and activity sync automatically instead of through manual export and import.
• Accounting and back office — QuickBooks, Xero, ERP systems — connecting sales and operational data to financials.
• Data synchronization — keeping two or more systems consistent, whether through scheduled syncs, real-time webhooks, or a combination, with clear rules for which system wins when data conflicts.

The pattern underneath all of these is the same: eliminate manual re-entry, reduce the errors that come with it, and free your team to work on things software can't do.

Our Process

We keep the approach deliberate so the result is something you can build on, not around.

1. Design first. We define the API contract — endpoints, payloads, error codes, auth model — before writing implementation code. Disagreements are cheap to resolve on paper and expensive to resolve in production.
2. Build incrementally. We ship working, tested endpoints in slices so you see progress and can give feedback while the design is still flexible.
3. Test thoroughly. Automated tests cover each endpoint and each integration path, so updates ship without quietly breaking what already works.
4. Document and hand off. You get interactive docs, a clear versioning plan, and code your own team can maintain — we don't build dependencies on us.

You can see how this fits alongside the rest of our software development services, since APIs rarely exist in isolation from the apps and products they support.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I use REST or GraphQL?

For most server-to-server work and standard web backends, REST is simpler and perfectly adequate. GraphQL pays off when you have data-heavy clients — especially mobile or complex dashboards — that need to fetch varied, precise data in few requests. We're happy to recommend one over the other once we understand how your data will be consumed.

Can you integrate with a third-party API that has poor documentation?

Yes. A meaningful share of integration work involves platforms with thin or outdated docs. We reverse-engineer behavior carefully through testing, build defensively around the gaps, and add the logging needed to catch surprises early.

How do you handle breaking changes from providers we depend on?

We isolate third-party integrations behind a layer of our own, so when a provider changes their API, the fix is contained in one place rather than scattered across your codebase. Combined with monitoring, that means breaking changes get caught and patched quickly instead of silently corrupting data.

Do we own the code you write?

Yes. You own the code, the documentation, and the deployment. We build so your own developers can take over maintenance whenever you choose.

Let's Talk About Your API Project

Whether you need a new API built from the ground up, a stubborn integration that finally works, or a tangle of systems made to sync reliably, we can help.

Schedule an intro call to walk through your requirements.